Chapter 5

The first security frame died before it got a shot off.

Alex's hands were already moving before his brain caught up — a three-round burst that caught the black-and-gold interceptor square in the reactor housing. It detonated in a silent orange bloom against the stars, and the Avenger threw itself sideways through the gap its shattered pieces left behind.

"Where did you learn to do that?" Fleur's voice came over the tactical channel, sharp with genuine surprise. She was still down in the hangar, watching the orbital feed on a screen the size of a shuttle.

"Vid games," Alex said.

"Bullshit."

"Rude."

A railgun slug skipped off the Avenger's shoulder plating, and Alex kicked the frame into a corkscrew that carried him clear of the next volley. The pursuers were everywhere — security frames pouring out of Pinnacle Station's docking ring like angry hornets, tightening into a net around him. His sister's face flickered in his mind, and he shoved it down. Focus. Survive. Find her.

He snapped off a counter-burst that clipped another frame's wing, sending it spinning wide on a broken thruster. Not a kill. Close enough.

On the secondary feed in the corner of his HUD, the Ultor was a whole different kind of problem. U-07's black prototype was moving — really moving, all dragonfly grace and thunder — but the boy riding it was a passenger in his own machine. He fired the plasma cannon like he was swatting flies and hit nothing, overcorrected, and nearly wrapped himself around a drifting hunk of wreckage. The Ultor's frame compensated for him at the last instant, shearing past the debris with centimeters to spare.

"U-07, you're oversteering," Fleur called, all business. "Stop fighting the stick. Let the frame's inertial dampeners do the work. Squeeze the trigger. Don't slap it."

A breathless, garbled voice came back. "I'm— yes. Sorry. There are so many of them."

"You're doing fine," Alex said, and it wasn't even a lie. The kid was alive. That was more than most first-time pilots could say.

Alex wrenched the Avenger through a tight ninety-degree burn, and inside his plugsuit, everything shifted. His teeth clicked together.

The prosthetics.

Military-grade warm-mold, Fleur had called them. Sculpted to reshape his chest into a convincing female silhouette, and the Third Wing plugsuit — cut for a woman, skin-tight smart-memory fabric — held them like a second skin. Which …